Friday, 18 May 2012

I don't want Tapatalk, so stop spamming me

There are plenty of discussion boards all over the web, and some of them are really useful. Unfortunately, many of them hate mobile browsers.

Search Google for any topic and there will be forum discussions in the search results. Hit one of those forum threads on your Android phone and you'll see a popup that tries to spam you into buying Tapatalk or similar forum reader apps. Some sites (xda, for example) even have their own forum app. As if anyone is gonna install an app that works for one forum only... next we'll be installing apps that only load a single website. Oh wait...

The most annoying thing about all those Tapatalk and Forum Runner popups is that they keep coming back. The only way to get them out of the way for a while is by allowing them to set a cookie on your phone, and keeping that cookie installed. If your browser deletes all cookies upon shutdown (you know, to try make the advertisers forget you) the Tapatalk popups never end. And junkfilters like AdAway or AdFree can't touch them, because the Tapatalk spam loads from a javascript on the forum site itself.

I wonder if those forums get a kickback on the app sales, because I can think of no other reason why any forum would allow such an annoying stream of popups to launch from their sites. A simple unobtrusive text link on the bottom of their website would do the job without making their sites look like an online casino that promises free pr0n and browser toolbars full of "interesting offers tailored to your interests." Maybe it's the Vigilink affiliate advertising spam in Tapatalk that makes forum admins drool with dollar signs in their eyes?

(Yes, this site has ads too. Feel free to block them, you're equally welcome if you do. Just block "pagead2.googlesyndication.com" and you'll never see those Google ads again.)

If anyone knows a way to kill the Tapatalk popups without having to make my mobile browser pretend to be a desktop browser or allow the Tapatalk cookies to stay on my phone forever, please leave a comment or hit the contact link on the bottom of this page.

Those Tapatalk popups have to die. All of them.

p.s. When I searched "block Tapatalk popup" on my phone, the built-in error correction automatically changed "popup" into "poop." Android is even smarter than I thought!

2 comments:

You could keep chrome or Firefox just for looking at forums, since they make an especially good job of that, with their text zooming tricks. I agree, its strange that the top mobile website doesn't have a mobile website (if you see what I mean).